Over the past few years, there have been clear signs of progress in women’s sports. You can see it in record franchise values in basketball and soccer, across the WNBA and NWSL, and with the 9.9 million fans who tuned in to the women’s NCAA basketball Final Four. And you can see it in brands like Ally Bank and Nike drawing a line in the sand to put their power and capital behind women’s sports.
Unfortunately, female professional athletes who are also moms find themselves in the same situation millions of other working moms in our country are in—without institutional support and struggling to balance a career and having children.
Motherhood and sports
Despite all the advances for women since the establishment of Title IX more than 50 years ago, the past five decades have also been filled with countless stories of female athletes whose decision to become mothers effectively ended their playing careers. Women who want to follow their dreams on the field often must delay motherhood or even hide the early stages of their pregnancies, fearful that the few opportunities to make a living professionally will be taken away from them the second their employers find out they are pregnant.
While we are finally seeing elite women athletes having the opportunities to continue their athletic careers beyond college, we are still woefully behind in finding ways to support women who want to become parents during their playing careers. As business leaders, we have the power to help change that.
Take Kelsey Stewart-Hunter, an Olympian and pro softball player. Kelsey knew it was time to start her family, but she wasn’t ready to give up playing pro softball. And we, as a league at Athletes Unlimited, wanted to find ways to support her in that journey. She played in our first season and took off the second season when she had her baby. During that time, we supported her financially even though she wasn’t playing. She then returned for season three earlier this year.
When my cofounder and I created our groundbreaking childcare policy, we wanted to make sure athletes could choose their own terms for how to be a part of our leagues when pregnant. Some may choose to continue playing for as long as their doctor says it’s safe, while others want to take a break and support their teams in alternative ways. Like so many aspects of our leagues, we wanted to put our athletes first, to ask them “what do you need?” and go from there.
Make the investment
As a company CEO, I can tell you it takes some work to tailor a policy around meeting an athlete where they’re at. It takes a huge degree of trust—in both directions—to say athletes can tell us on their own terms what they want when they’re pregnant, how they want to participate, and how/when/if they want to return to their sport. And it takes some real staffing and monetary resources to find a personalized childcare solution when they are back to playing with us. But ultimately, it’s worth it.
Parenthood doesn’t have to be the end of an athlete’s career—it could just be a part of their journey. In a recent report from McKinsey & Company and Marshall Plan for Moms, 53% of women with children who are newborn to age 5 said that childcare was a reason they temporarily left the workforce, worked fewer hours, or changed to a less demanding role. When we consider the return on investment of supporting the moms in our workforce, beyond it being the right thing to do, it just makes good business sense.
It’s time for the entire sports industry to listen to the athletes, and give them what they need to thrive.
Jon Patricof is cofounder and CEO of Athletes Unlimited.
